Confidence

That’s my Dad and me.  I don’t remember the moment the picture was taken, but I’ve thought about this shot often in the last few years.  And especially in the last month as I’ve reflected on what I learned from him.  My parents had a son that they lost in infancy about four years before I was born.  So, Dad taught me to box (he was a boxer when he was a teenager) – yes, box, when I was about 3 or 4 years old.  I think he missed having a son.  Fortunately for me, my brother was born when I was 4 years old.

Dad wanted me to have confidence, to face challenges and to not wait for anyone to do for you what you could do yourself.  The day I left home for the first time to go away to college, I had my suitcases packed and I was ready to leave.  Mom asked Dad to carry the suitcases to the car.  He refused and she got upset.  He told her that I needed to do it myself because when I got to Colorado, I would have to carry it without anyone to help me.  So I needed to know that I could lift everything I was taking.  He was right.

When I came home for Christmas in 1972, Dad had been in the hospital battling the cancer that was spreading, but the doctors let him come home.  It was during that break that Mom told me Dad was going to die.  I returned to Colorado right after New Years Day and back to school, getting ready to graduate in June.  I was so surprised to get a letter from Dad in March, the only letter I ever got from him – ever.  He said he was happy I made it through college and he knew I would be successful.

I guess that’s why I’ve thought about that picture.  He was probably pointing out a rock or something out in the ocean, but I like to imagine that he was telling me that the future was out there and I could make it.  Dads can do that for you.  They can give you an assurance that you are capable and able.  Another way of saying that is strength of character.

As I’ve traveled the way of Jesus, I’ve found that strength, confidence, character comes from the Heavenly Father.  My Dad had strengths and flaws, weaknesses and talents.  And he couldn’t be around forever.  But the Lord is the one who never leaves us.  He surrounds us and gives us strength to face every challenge, every test, every disappointment and every fear.  So, we sit in His lap and look for His direction.

It’s still Father’s Day where I am, so I wish a Happy Father’s Day to all the dads I know.  And a very special one to my nephew, Aldie, a first-time daddy.  May Josiah always see in you the confidence and strength that comes from the Lord.

Boys Day

 They don’t call it Boys Day anymore.  It’s now called Children’s Day.  I guess there’s no Girls day or  Boys Day just Children’s Day now.  In my childhood, I remember the flying carp (koi) celebrating Boys Day because koi symbolized perseverance in life, swimming no matter what the circumstances.

May 5, also became a marker in my family 10 years ago when my Mom passed away, on Boys Day.  One week before Mothers Day.  One of the qualities I observed about mothers from watching my Mom is unselfishness.  One of the jokes around our dinner table growing up was when we were having chicken.  Dad would always remind us that the neck and the wings were Mom’s favorite pieces, so don’t eat that.  One night after years of that reminder, Mom revealed they weren’t her favorite parts.  She said that only because when Mom & Dad were first married, she was so happy that Dad seemed to devour the chicken she cooked, she said that so he wouldn’t hesitate to eat everything else.

A post from one of my friends on facebook reminded me of that.  It said that a mom is someone who says she doesn’t want any pie when she sees there are four slices of pie and 5 people.

I made it through college on loans my Dad & I took out and a grant from the school.  I didn’t work in college because I thought I would save money if I took at least 19-20 credits every quarter and graduate in 4 years.  Mom sent me $35 a month for everything else like supplies and extras like going for an ice cream cone at Baskin Robbins (had to walk through the snow with my roommate, Sandy, to do that in the dead of winter).  Decades later Mom told me she never bought any new clothes for herself while I was in college.  That’s how I got the $35.  I'm so glad I mattered more than new clothes.

Unselfishness.  Sacrifice.  Qualities we learn from our parents that introduce us to the character of God.  He sacrificed His Son even when we were oblivious to His love for us.   As we journey through life in our relationship with God, we become more and more aware that love is like that.  Great love leads to great sacrifice.

And so, Happy Mothers Day to all the mothers I know!  Especially to Jamie, mother of Josiah (my new grandnephew) – on the first of a lifetime of Mothers Days!

Knight of Faith

Chapter 10
Standouts

"God's calling is the key to igniting a passion for the deepest growth and highest heroism in life."

"a knight of faith" - Soren Kierkegaard

"He accepts whatever happens in this visible dimension without complaint, lives his life as a duty, faces his death without a qualm. No pettiness is so petty that it threatens his meanings; no task is too frightening to be beyond his courage." - Ernest Becker

"Following the call becomes the secret of growth and a key to heroism in two ways. First, God's call always challenges us directly to rise to our full stature as human beings."

"God's call resonates in us at depths no other call can reach and draws us on and out and up to heights no other call can scale or see."

"This world is a great sculptor's shop. We are the statues and there is a rumor going round the shop that some of us are some day going to come to life." C.S. Lewis

Second, God's call to follow him is vital to growth and heroism because it includes the element of imitation. . ."

"Modeling - observing and copying - is vital to discipleship because of the biblical view of the way disciples must learn. There is always more to knowing than human knowing will ever know. So the deepest knowledge can never be put into words - or spelled out in sermons, books, lectures, and seminars. It must be learned from the Master, under his authority, in experience."

"Real lives touch us profoundly - they stir, challenge, rebuke, shame, amuse, and inspire at levels of which we are hardly aware. That is why biographies are the literature of calling; few things are less mechanical."

"No more do we change by ourselves as we imitate Christ. The imitation of Christ that is integral to following him means that, when he calls us, he enables us to do what he calls us to do.
Has anyone said it better than Oswald Chambers in his matchless description of the disciple's master passion, 'My utmost for his highest'?"

One of the questions in the study guide for this chapter asked,"Who are your heroes and why?"

I discovered the bookmobile in the 6th grade. It regularly visited my school and one day I borrowed a book about Amelia Earhart. I enjoyed reading biographies and of all the ones I read, Amelia Earhart is only one I remember reading. Her courage and daring inspired me. It pushed her to the ultimate pursuit of flying around the world and getting lost in her last leg over the Pacific Ocean. Wow.

The Scripture Focus was Matthew 25:14-30, on the talents. The servants who took the risk were rewarded. What they had was multiplied. The one that hid what he had been given was afraid to take risks. God calls us to live like Jesus. If we take the step to risk it all, we will find him faithful to enable us to live out the call given.

The Eye in the Sky

Chapter 9
Standouts

"Most of us, whether we are aware of it or not, do things with an eye to the approval of some audience or other. The questions is not whether we have an audience but which audience we have."

"A life lived listening to the decisive call of God is a life lived before one audience that trumps all others - the Audience of One."

"To follow the call of God is therefore to live before the heart of God. It is to live life coram deo (before the heart of God) and thus to shift our awareness of audiences to the point where only the last and highest - God - counts."

"I wonder how far Moses would have gone if he had taken a poll in Egypt." -Harry Truman

"General Charles Gordon, peerless military strategist, legendary commander, and mostly all-conquering victor, lived so closely before the Audience of One that when his time came, he had only a short step home. Like all for whom God's call is decisive, it could be said of him, 'I live before the Audience of One. Before others I have nothing to prove, nothing to gain, nothing to lose.'"

Matthew 6:1-4 was the scripture focus with the question, "Why does Jesus require that our good deeds be done in secret?"

Most of the time I can do the good deed in secret. But what I'd really like is for the reward/blessing to be the marching band, the round of applause, the confetti. And what if God's blessing in secret is stuff like patience, kindness, mercy and grace - stuff I will live out and give out. Thinking that way really reveals that I have not lived before the heart of God. But as Jesus refocuses me to remember who it was that gave me reason and purpose for living, I live and serve, love and give before the Audience of One, the Eye in the Sky. The driving motivation of my life will be to honor the Caller.

Terrible Sweetness of Jesus

Chapter 8
Standouts
"God's primary call, his address to us, always has two dimensions: summons and invitation, law and grace, demand and offer. Unquestionably the former comes first, yet that side is missing among many followers of Christ today. The result is a casualness in faith and a slackness in behavior that show no sign of having listened to any call from either Sinai or Galilee, let alone Calvary."

"All too often our familiarity with the Gospels breeds inattention. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer insisted, 'The response of the disciples is an act of obedience, not a confessions of faith in Jesus.' They did not consider his claims, make up their minds, and then decide whether to follow - they simply heard and obeyed."

"The only way to follow is to leave everything and follow him."

"Disciples are not so much those who follow as those who must follow."

The scripture focus of this chapter is Matthew 4:18-22 (the calling of Peter & Andrew and James & John). When I was about 4 or 5-years-old, I was with my mom in Woolworth in downtown Honolulu (about 1955). It was crowded. We were together and then we weren't. I was lost. I've never felt so desperate, so alone. I looked around and I couldn't see her. Then, I heard a voice calling my name. I didn't see her, but I knew it was my mom - instantly. No mulling over if it was her voice or not. I knew it was her. Every child knows mom's voice, their mom. I ran to her. I wasn't lost anymore.

Hot Gates

Chapter 7
Standouts
"... one of the most courageous stands in human history: Thermopylae."

"But at their core were three hundred Spartans, trained to stand or die. ("Come back with your shield or on it," a Spartan mother told her son.) They were led by a fifty-five-year-old Spartan prince, Leonidas. And they took their stand in a narrow pass, twenty yards wide, bounded by the sea on one side and the five thousand-foot cliffs of Mt. Kallidromos on the other. Hot sulfurous springs, which the Greeks called Thermopylae, or Hot Gates, bubbled out of these cliffs at the narrowest place."

"But before they died, they sent home the stirring message that has become their epitaph: 'Stranger, tell the Spartans that we behaved as they would wish us to, and are buried here.'"

"As the French philosopher Montaigne said of Thermopylae two thousand years later, 'there are triumphant defeats that rival victories.'"

"Will it be said of followers of Jesus Christ across the world, 'Passerby, tell our Lord that we have behaved as he would wish us to behave, and are buried here'?"

"'A time to stand' is a time to behave as our Lord would wish us to behave. A time to behave is a time to believe as he has taught us to believe. A time to believe is a time to move from small, cozy formulations of faith to knowing what it is to be called by him as the deepest most stirring, and most consuming passion of our lives."

The scripture focus for this chapter was 2 Timothy 4:1-8. As I read it, with ch. 7 in mind, I remembered those who were the "older people" when I first started in ministry. In the last few years several of them have "finished the race" and they are missed. One of the questions asked in this section was, "Why did Paul have confidence that he was finishing well?"

One reason I think Paul had that confidence was Timothy. Someone to hand it to, to take over, someone who would stand.

Several days ago, as I was going up the stairs to my office with my eleven-year-old nephew, he said to me, "I'm going to replace you." I think he meant he wanted my office space (just kidding - because we both laughed). But, in the deepest part of me, I hope that happens. I hope someone who grew up here takes over my office.

Ours for Others

Chap. 6
Standouts:
"Somehow we human beings are never happier than when we are expressing the deepest gifts that are truly us. And often we get a revealing glimpse of these gifts early in life. Graham Greene wrote in The Power and the Glory, "There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in." Countless examples could be added to these stories, but they all point to another crucial aspect of calling - God normally calls us along the line of our giftedness, but the purpose of giftedness is stewardship and service, not selfishness."

"This is why our gifts are always 'ours for others,' whether in the community of Christ or the broader society outside, especially the neighbor in need."

"... God created us and our gifts for a place of his choosing - and we will only be ourselves when we are finally there."

"... Soren Kierkegaard's observation that life is lived forward but understood backward.'

"Do what you are"

"Ours for others"

When I was in grade school, I wanted to be a doctor. Then in the 5th grade I wrote a play, or rather I co-wrote a play. I think it was about Lewis and Clark. That's when it started. That's when I wanted to be a writer. I don't know if that's when the door opened and the future was let in or not, but I there are times when I look at what I've written and wondered where it came from. It's been almost 50 years since then.

And the classmate that co-wrote the play with me - he became an English professor and has won literary awards for writing poetry. I guess I'm still waiting.

The scripture focus on 1 Corinthians 9:14-23 is about Paul's calling to preach. In reading it and reflecting on it, I know this about myself: for the last 30+ years, I would not hesitate to disciple students even if it was not in my job description and I did it on my "free time". I would do it for free.